Teaching an Interpersonal Senior Seminar Partially via the Internet Computer Conferencing. - Download this document for free, or read online. Document in PDF available to download.

This paper reports on a college educator's attempts over the past two years to use computer conferencing via the Internet as a 3-week unit in a semester-long senior level seminar in Interpersonal Communication. The paper states that the educator wanted to see if he could successfully add computer conferencing as a part of an existing face-to-face (FtoF) course. A computer conference is defined in the paper as an asynchronous electronic conference organized by subject or topic. According to the paper, since computer conferencing satisfies the college as a writing intensive course and the teaching method employed is process and discussion-oriented, the effective use of computer conferencing parallels classroom discussion in FtoF classes. The paper explains that one part of the course examines "the mediating effects of the computer" in the development, maintenance, and dissolution of online personal, social, and working relationships. It adds that computer conferencing was used in place of FtoF class discussion to give the students practical experience in computer conferencing via the Internet as they read about computer mediated communication and discussed its effects on the development of interpersonal relationships. The paper describes the online unit in the seminar and recounts the online interactions. It also presents self-reported data from the 22 students who participated and were asked to respond anonymously to a series of questions about the class. The paper then discusses the students' final papers and their opinions of the differences between relationships online and FtoF. (Contains conferencing information.) (NKA)

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